If I didn’t feel the sugary twinge of sentiment in Alba: A Wildlife Adventure, it is down to its pastel starkness.
In vesting each weapon with the click and whir of a plaything, it gives you a way into the texture of its landscape, and before long you're swept up.
The fun of playing these games, especially these days, lies in the director, Ryuchi Nishizawa, whose approach to genre was one of precise and genial disregard.
If the DNA of Biomutant sparks a re-evolution of some of the genre's dull spots, perhaps we can forgive the dull spots present here.
The game isn't above jolting you with the odd jump scare, but it's far happier to politely trouble your sleep.
Though it comes with a crop of upgrades, and its graphics have been brushed to a smooth shine, what it offers, despite its title, is the joy of the old.
Reaching the credits, I sat back, exhausted and disappointed at where the series had ended up.
Complex systems are made simple, by committing their clutter to muscle memory, and play-good play, at any rate-requires that you, like Selene, ride its enigmatic loop.
Taro's approach is of a restless rarity; he swaps genres as though trying to scratch an itch.
In that image lies the appeal-and for some the off-putting twinge-of Oddworld: a bleak and black-hearted concoction, laced with snickering humour and shot through with hope.